Babies Smiles Get Mommy High

Mommies Get Buzzed with a Cheeky Grin

New moms may not crave the buzz that a margarita allows as they've got a natural upper on their hands. A study conducted by the Baylor College of Medicine reveals that mothers often experience a "high" when seeing their child smile.

Assistant professor of pediatrics at Baylor and and Texas Children's Hospital, Lane Strathearn and his team studied the brain reactions of 28-first time moms. They used functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan the mothers' brain reactions to photographs of their 5-month to 10-month-old babies and those of others in three emotional states: happy, neutral and sad.

As expected, the sight of their happy babies sent blood rushing to the moms’ brain regions associated with dopamine, a neurotransmitter that plays an important role in addiction. The spike rewarded the mothers with a neural kick that prompted them to want to take action to care for their babies.

To see how the mommies responded to their children's sad faces,

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Surprisingly, however, the moms in the study didn’t respond as strongly to their infants when their expressions were neutral — or when they were in distress. The neural scans showed the mothers responded to all crying infants about the same, by activating areas of the brain involved in conflict.